


Tired on a Stormy Night

by narcissisticReptile



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Best Friends, Fluff, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Marauders, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Marauders Friendship (Harry Potter), Protective Sirius Black, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:34:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26115010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcissisticReptile/pseuds/narcissisticReptile
Summary: Sirius has been alone for too long now, alone with nothing but worry for his friends lives and grief for the ones he's already lost. If only Remus were here, he would think. And then, maybe he really was.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 1
Kudos: 42





	Tired on a Stormy Night

**Author's Note:**

> Taking a little break (one day, wow) from writing my current serial Wolfstar fic to throw this together. I hope it is just the right amount of sad and soft and hopeful. JK Rowling is awful and Remus and Sirius deserve so much better.

The window rattled in its frame as an October storm raged outside. It was long past midnight and Sirius had only just put down his book to attempt to get some proper sleep. He had been up for three days straight now, but tiredness still felt like something distant he could barely imagine. 

Panic had been coursing through his veins in place of blood for months now, ever since Marlene and her family had been killed. Nothing at all could soothe this dark and seething anxiety, safety seemed such a childish fantasy these days. 

He stared for a while at the book he had left sitting on the empty pillow next to him, trying desperately not to think about who it reminded him of. Turning restlessly, he pulled the duvet over his head and reached for his wand, casting a quick warming charm, focusing as much as he could on the sounds of the wind and rain outside. 

He imagined for a while that he was back at Hogwarts, curled up next to James on a winter night, whispering back and forth their plans for grand Halloween practical jokes. His stilled for long enough that he could drift into a temperamental sleep.

He woke with a start only an hour later, a loud crackling sound ringing through the air. Thunder and lightning, maybe, but Sirius reached for his wand reflexively. Frozen still, he listened for any sign of intrusion. Not hearing anything, he slid carefully out of his blanket and off of his bed, walking slowly towards his half-open bedroom door. He left it open precisely for situations like this, to be able to spot danger from as comfortable of a distance as possible in a four-room flat.

His eyes darted around the living room and kitchen nervously before they landed on something out of place. 

Remus Lupin, looking like death, propped up against the front door, clothes stained dark with what was almost certainly his own blood. 

“Moony!”, Sirius yelled, and then, “What’s happened?”, as he rushed to his friend’s side. 

Remus didn’t reply, just let out a ragged breath and winced, clutching at his side. “Patch me up, will you, Pads? I’d do it myself but I think I’d stitch my elbow to my chin with the way my ears are ringing at the moment”, he managed, trying to wave his wand arm around a bit to make his point clear but instead dropping his wand which promptly rolled under the couch. “Ah, just my luck”, he groaned, looking like he might pass out. 

Sirius scrambled to figure out what exactly needed fixing and cast some hurried healing charms before getting up to grab some Skele-Gro and Dittany from the cabinet under the sink. Werewolves had a quick metabolism that leant itself well to rapid healing, but that was only helpful if the werewolf in question was alive long enough to heal.

He turned on the light as he made his way back to Remus, which meant he could see the true extent of his injuries. His shirt was all dark red, stemming from a spot below his left ribs, and his face looked pretty beaten in as well. His whole left side seemed worst off, with several rips in his jacket arm there, dripping dark pools onto the hardwood floor.

“You weren’t followed?”, Sirius questioned as he poured the potions into Remus’ mouth, brain finally catching up enough with the situation at hand.

Remus shook his head tiredly, “None left to follow me, but I’m always careful anyways, unlike someone I know”. He looked up at Sirius with a look that was intended to be accusatory but turned out like a wonky grimace in his injury-induced drunkenness.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”, Sirius grumbled, pulling open Remus’ shirt to wrap bandages over what looked like a set of very broken ribs.

“Y’never checked it was actually me, you idiot”.

“Fuck!”. Sirius pulled his hands away quickly and stumbled backwards a few steps. “Well, erm, tell me my favourite kind of bird?”.

“How on earth am I supposed to know that Pads? And if the answer is owl I think I’d like you to let me bleed out, right here, so I don’t have to think about how deeply stupid you are”, Remus groaned, hands pulling dramatically at his face.

“It wasn’t an owl!”, Sirius pouted, although it was a lie, “Just tell me something Moony-ish so that I can go back to saving your life already!”.

“That’s not how it’s supposed to work, you have to ask me-”, Remus started but then winced again in pain and gave up on his lecture, “Fine, fine, you’re an illegal animagus, a dog, although I often have to wonder if the dog isn’t your true self and the human form is the façade because the way your brain works- “.

He was cut off by Sirius scrambling forward again and continuing with the bandages, which made him yelp in pain.

“The real way to test if Remus Lupin is actually Remus Lupin is to be as idiotic as possible and see how long it takes for him to become unbearably frustrated and start rambling”, Sirius said with a weak smile. 

“No, you just really are a fool”, Remus returned.

After letting the potions do their work for a few minutes, Sirius carried Remus over to the couch, seeing as in front of the door wasn’t an ideal spot for resting. He grabbed a blanket from the room that had once, briefly, been James’ and tossed it over his thankfully no longer dying friend before moving to put the kettle on.

“Are you going to tell me how you ended up like this?”, Sirius asked, sitting down on the carpet in front of the couch.

Remus looked over him analytically, then rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “I shouldn’t”.

“That’s not a no”.

Remus’ head turned back to Sirius, his expression soft and sad now. “I’m terrible at keeping things from you. That’s probably why no one ever tells me anything important”.

“So, tell me then”.

Remus pulled his blanket over his chin and closed his eyes. “Make me some tea first”.

Sirius begrudgingly got up and wandered back over to the kitchen. It made his chest buzz with fear to even take his eyes off of Remus, but he pushed it down to focus on making tea. 

“You’re being terribly annoying to someone who just prevented your death”, he said, glaring at the mugs in his cupboard. He pulled out his two favourites and set them on the counter.

“Well you’re always annoying me so it’s about time I get you back some”, Remus mumbled, still under the blanket.

Sirius finished making the tea and set one mug down on the coffee table, in Remus’ reach from the couch, and returned to his spot on the floor. “There you go, perfect cuppa for you. Now, tell me”.

Remus didn’t move from his place under the blanket. 

“What now, Remus?”, said Sirius, impatience bleeding into his tone.

“Stop staring at me”.

“How would you know I’m staring from under there?”.

“You always are”.

Sirius felt his face grow hot and he looked down at the mug in his hands instead. “Well, I’m extremely worried you’re going to die on my couch at the moment, or that a hundred death eaters are going to break down my door and murder us both any second now, so I’m not sure what you expect from me”.

A hand poked out from the blanket and reached around for the mug on the coffee table, almost knocking it onto the floor in the process. It seemed to give up then, and Remus emerged from his blanket cocoon. 

“Well”, said Remus.

“Well”, echoed Sirius,

Remus took a long sip from his tea. “Have you anything stronger to put in this? Oh, fine I’ll tell you first but then you must indulge me in great swathes of alcohol”.

“It’s a deal”, Sirius said, smiling. At least Moony was still Moony, of all the things that had changed and were changing, that could be a trusted constant. 

“I was on a mission for good ol’ Professor Dumbledore, as I’m sure you already guessed. Tailing some suspected werewolves, as is generally my job. Turned out I wasn’t being quite as sneaky as I had thought, it’s always hard to know when you’ve been used to having a cloak of invisibility at your disposal for such escapades, I’m sure you understand. And anyways, they cornered me in an alley, way up North I was, no where near here at all, not many packs in London these days, ambushed me four on one, I killed them all but only after they got a few hits in, and then here I was. Not much to it really, when you say it out loud.”

“You were alone?”, Sirius asked, bewildered, “But we’re always supposed to be in pairs for things like that”.

Remus laughed quietly, still in a lot of pain no doubt. “Aren’t any other werewolves to pair me off with for missions like that, Pads”. His eyes looked so sad and empty as he took another sip from his tea, like his mind was far away.

“I would have gone, I’m doggish enough, and to anyone else I could just say I’m extra muscle”.

Remus shook his head, “No, they could turn you, it’s far too dangerous for anyone but me”.

“No, it’s far too dangerous for you, specifically, on your own, look at you”. There was some anger in Sirius’ voice, but mostly fear, and something terrible that he pushed away, selfishness, probably. He didn’t care who else got hurt so long as it wasn’t Remus. 

Remus pulled up the blanket and glanced under it comically, “Looks alive to me, wouldn’t you say?”.

Sirius glowered, “Barely, what if I’d been out? Or didn’t wake up, and I had to find you dead on my floor in the morning?”. He shivered at the image of it in his head, he’d seen it plenty of times in his nightmares since the war began.

“You’re never out and you sleep like a skittish puppy if you sleep at all”, Remus said, matter-of-factly. Sirius couldn’t argue with that. “Now where’s the fire whiskey, hm?”.

The two drank in silence for a while, Sirius watching Remus carefully, noting how tired and distraught he looked under then now healing bruises and cuts. It hurt to know that he too held this heaviness in him, the weight of knowing everything could be gone at any moment and there was little they could do to prevent it. It hurt to know he couldn’t fix it, not while he had no idea what could make himself feel better. Just when he was starting to get drunk enough to not think about it, Remus burst out in a fit of giggles.

“What’s so funny?”.

“Your face”, Remus laughed.

Sirius’ eyebrows scrunch together, “That’s a very unoriginal joke, Moony, I think Peter told me that one in first year.”

“No, no”, Remus started, over his laughing now, “I was just thinking of how rarely I saw you worried in the seven years I knew you at school, saw you near every minute of every day, and now that’s the only expression you ever have. It’s just awful, all that we’ve become, what would our young selves think of us? Sad old men, they’d call us, at the ancient age of twenty-one, imagine it”.

Sirius smiled, not really seeing what was funny about that but amused by Remus’ demeanour. “You’ve always been a worrier; you’ve only gotten more tired”.

“I s’ppose so, it’s hard not to worry when all your friends are terrible troublemakers and full of Gryffindor stupidity”.

“I think they call that courage, Remus”, Sirius corrected in his best Moony impression.

“And I think they call you an awful git”, Remus replied, waving his arms about in a very Padfoot-esque manner. Sirius rolled onto his back laughing, not because it was particularly funny, but because he felt, for just a moment, like himself.

Remus sat up from the couch, sliding onto the floor next to Sirius. He pulled his blanket with him and draped it carefully over both of their legs. 

“You’re such a mom, Moony”, Sirius sighed happily, passing the Firewhiskey bottle at his side to Remus. He took it and had another sip, his cheeks flushing at the warmth of it.

“Who else is there to look after you?”, he smiled. Sirius’ chest felt warm at that, knowing Remus would always be there for him.

“When’re you leaving to fend for myself then?”, he asked, trying to give his best puppy-dog-eyes.

Remus chuckled, “Dunno, Padfoot. I haven’t anywhere to be anytime soon, other than letting Dumbledore know what happened in the morning. I’ve been moving around a lot, so I don’t have a, er, particularly permanent residence”. 

His head fell on Sirius’ shoulder then, and the weight of him was immensely comforting in a way Sirius wouldn’t have expected. Moony is here with me, he thought, he’s right here. They hadn’t seen each other in weeks before this.

“You can stay here”, Sirius mumbled, now leaning his own head on Remus’, relishing in the soothing shared body heat.

“Don’t tempt me, I might never leave”, Remus yawned.

“I don’t want you to leave”, Sirius said, then adding quickly, “I hate the quiet, and I can make sure you don’t die if you’re here”.

“Oh”, Remus said thoughtfully. “Hmm, we’ll talk about it tomorrow, I think it’s time for bed”. 

It must’ve been at least three in the morning by then, and Sirius was feeling more genuinely sleepy than he had in an age, so he nodded and made to stand up.

“Help an old man up, would you? It still hurts to move”. Remus stretched a bit and winced, Sirius gladly giving him a hand and pulling him to his feet. Remus kept all his weight on Sirius even when standing, not confident in his own ability to stay upright. “I’ll take the spare room then”.

“No”, Sirius said, without thinking. He looked at the ground immediately, sure he would be blushing if he weren’t already flushed from drinking. It was terribly awkward to be in love with your best friend, sometimes. “Just, erm, I don’t want you to be too far away, half-dead as you are”.

Sirius was certain he would question it, telling him that he was far from death’s door now, or that the spare room was only ten steps away from his own bed, or something equally as logical, but Remus only gave him a funny smile that made his stomach twist.

He held firm to Sirius’ arm, “Lead the way then, Mr. Black. I am awfully close to passing out where I stand”.

Upon entering Sirius’ bedroom, Remus started spontaneously laughing again. 

“What now, finally gone senile is it?”, Sirius questioned impatiently. 

“Well, you’ve obviously no need for me here at all, with this dusty old book warming your pillow. Let’s see what it is then, 101 ways to Charm a Witch or something along those lines, I should imagine?”, Remus said, reaching for it. 

Sirius thought of trying to stop him, but it seemed a bit of a childish move, even for drunken Sirius. 

“Beowulf, hmm, certainly unexpected. And Chickering’s translation, quite nice”, he turned to Sirius, grinning, “You do know it’s not actually about wolves, Pads?”.

“I know what it’s about, oh, shut up would you. For once in my life I try to be an academic and now you’re mocking me, what are you trying to teach me?”, Sirius said, crossing his arms defensively.

Remus was still smiling light-heartedly, “I’m only teasing, Sirius, we can have a good discussion about it once you’re done, and maybe I’ll recommend you some other translations. And we both know you’re plenty scholarly, as much as you try to pretend otherwise.”

“Why is it that you get to know all my secrets, Remus?”, Sirius asked, barely a whisper, as he climbed into his bed.

“Because you tell me them all, silly”, Remus replied, peeling off the rest of his dry-blood caked clothes. 

Sirius watched him do so, looking first at all the fresh injuries, much better looking now than when he had been tending to them, then at the layers of old scars, long silver things across his chest, and the jagged bite along his side. His eyes wandered to the soft line of his stomach, his slight shoulders, along the curve of his spine. 

Remus definitely caught him looking but Sirius figured he just seemed to be concerned about his state of disrepair, which he was, alongside all the other sappy feelings brewing in his chest. 

Remus crawled into bed then, and Sirius muttered the spell to turn off the lights under his breath. Moonlight still peeked through the curtains, and Sirius could see the faint outline of Remus next to him. It did funny things to his heart, having Remus sleeping next to him again after so long. It had only been three years since Hogwarts, but it felt like infinitely longer.

He didn’t even try to sleep, despite being tired. He didn’t want this little moment of peace to slip by unconsciously. So, he just watched Remus, his chest rising and falling slowly with his breathing, his hair a mess, badly wanting for a haircut, sprawling across Sirius’ pillow. Sirius’ pillow, with Remus Lupin on it, imagine that. Sirius had, plenty.

“Sirius just come over here”, Remus said out of the blue, Sirius startled, thinking he had been asleep already.

“Hmm?”, he murmured back sleepily.

“Stop. Looking. At. Me. And. Come. Here”, Remus said, exaggerating each word, as he stretched his back and gestured towards his chest. 

“Erm”, was the only sound Sirius could manage, confused. 

“Go Padfoot if it’s easier, just come here. It’s cold and I don’t want you staring at me wondering if I’m going to stop breathing until morning.”

“Too tired for Padfoot”, Sirius said, tentatively moved closer to Remus. Remus stretched out his closest arm to welcome him. He paused for a moment, considering what to do next. He didn’t have much time to contemplate, as Remus’ arm wrapped around him and pulled him up, so his cheek was resting against Remus’ chest.

“Doesn’t this hurt? You must be all sore”, Sirius whispered, still unsure of what was happening. 

“Not any more than it’s worth”.

“Moony- “.

“Shush, Pads. You’re lovely and warm, y’know, should be easy to go to sleep”.

“I don’t want to hurt you though”, Sirius grumbled.

“You’re not, light as a feather you are. And look, you don’t have to watch me breathing to know I’m alive, you can hear my heart still going in there, can’t you?”.

He really could hear Remus’ heart, steadily beating in his chest, and it was a rather soothing thing. 

“You know me too well”, Sirius murmured against his chest. He felt Remus’ head shift and then something warm and soft on his forehead. Remus had kissed him. His whole body grew several degrees warmer.

“Goodnight, Pads, sweet dreams”.

Sirius thought for a moment before whispering, “Love you, Remus”.

He felt a chuckle rumble through Remus’ chest.

“Love you too, Sirius”.


End file.
